We frequently discover that research for these columns leads us in strange and wonderful directions. This effort, for instance, started out as a comment on NASCAR’s inconsistencies in political correctness, and wound up as a study of the variations of a common cussword.  
Along the way, it detoured into show biz, politics and the inanities of those who insist we must be Politically Correct.
You may recall that in a post-race interview last year the unpredictable Tony Stewart uttered what is probably the most common American vulgarism, the four-letter word for human and animal waste (hint: rhymes with spit).
Although NASCAR seems to pretty much ignore mass drunkenness, obscene language and public urination by fans in some of its grandstands, it reacted in horror to such a gross breach of decorum by Stewart. He was fined an amount, that while insignificant to him, would cover the thirstiest Bubba’s beer tab for a couple of years.
It seems odd that the most common everyday cussword in our language should generate such high-horsedness from NASCAR’s Office of Manners, Morals and Censorship.
The late great character actor Peter Boyle, in his role as Frank Barone in “Everybody Loves Raymond” made “Holy Crap” acceptable TV language. And now, “turd” has entered the public domain as well. Watching the Ebert and Roeper movie review show recently, we heard a guest critic refer to a bad film as “a real turd.”
And while scatological program content (and public acceptance of it) loosens up to allow ever more explicit material, Political Correctness dictates that we must not tread on anyone’s sensibilities.
So remember: Mark Martin and Cale Yarborough are not short. In PC-speak, they are “vertically challenged.”  
And Jimmy Spencer and the brothers Bodine are not bald, they are “follically challenged.”
Tony Stewart’s lapses of verbal decorum render him “Sensitivity challenged.”
Before he became the incredible shrinking man, NASCAR President Mike Helton was not fat, he was “girth challenged.”
(A political aside: We were amused to learn that Karl Rove, the man often referred to as “Bush’s Brain” had the White House nickname “Turdblossom.” Our research revealed that there actually is such a thing: It is a tiny flower that blooms in cattle droppings).
We old crocks who grew up in racing’s road-gypsy days of the 1940s and 1950s lament the loss of the bawdy humor that was so much a part of that pre-PC era: “A Priest, a Rabbi and a Baptist minister walk into a house of ill repute...”
Remember those? Funnier than hell, but gone forever in today’s PC world.
People who are zealous about Political Correctness can get pretty strange. They apparently would have us believe that it is possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
(Thanks to John Trussler for some great inspirational material).